Between Horizons (XS) - Review

by Lee Mehr , posted on 20 October 2024 / 1,862 Views

Life aboard the Zephyr is bound to feel rather confining. Being stowed on a spaceship with approximately 1,300 people has to come with some buyer's remorse. What of those born on it, having only drawn breath from recycled air crafted by a fake atmosphere? For the average Earthling, such limited space for so long – even with all basic amenities accounted for – could be maddening. Only one thing keeps the cogs turning here: "The Mission." Due to Earth's dire straits, over a thousand volunteers were willing to set course for a new habitable home: Eurus-d. Given its four-lightyear distance from Earth, no one who willingly signed up for this will see their new home. To borrow from another sci-fi/fantasy series: they're burning their lives for a sunrise they won't see.

Our protagonist, Stella, is contemplating this during her opening monologue. As a security officer and daughter to the Chief of Security, William, her whole life is now indebted to The Mission by trying to maintain peace and order within this impressive spaceship. For 33 years, the Zephyr has remained steadily en route to its destination, but all it takes is a little push for things to careen off-course. After a tragedy leads to Stella inheriting her father's post, she's now tasked with uncovering a conspiracy that threatens to disrupt the ship's social order.

Advancing from Digitales Interactive's first game (Lacuna), Between Horizons is a 2.5 pixel-art adventure focused on deduction and detective work. The first act works as a succinct primer to familiarize players with both exploring this space station and understanding the reams of data stored on Stella's PDA. The former is rather simple: by tapping the ping button (X), a bubble-burst forms around Stella, highlighting nearby interactables to save in her logbook. Everything from objects of interest to locations are stored in their proper designations to potentially spurn on more conversation with key NPCs.

Nothing may be new under the Zephyr's artificial sun, but at least the core puzzle concepts are fundamentally sound. There's a clear logical track to them, whether it's a math solution, timeline discrepancy, or whatnot. None of them really tread into impressive complexity per se, but the beats to reach the correct conclusion demand you treat Stella like a typical gumshoe: gathering evidence, investigating all known suspects, and seeing which alibis hold water. Given Horizons' mandatory auto-save system for each case decision – disabling mulligans altogether – there's a heightened demand to disinter each important detail. There's some hand-holding in the form of Ally Murphy's voiced lines talking about loose puzzle threads, but the more thorough detective that's ahead of Stella can treat these like her internal monologue processing events.

A greater series of issues stem from acquiring new evidence. Rummaging through this world or talking to new characters is most often done by spamming Stella's PDA bubble-burst to find the highlighted outline. There's also an exaggerated emphasis on back-tracking, which wouldn't be so bad were it not for the faulty fast travel system. Rather than directly hopping between discovered locations, you arrive at that district's tram checkpoint to then hoof it the rest of the way – even if wanting to quickly jump to a nearby spot in the same district. Given the quasi-non-linear design of the cases and the general layout, it feels like deliberate padding to flex a modest 4-hour (non-completionist) runtime. And though a recent update has cleaned up bugs, there are still leftover errors like geometry issues which force restarts, or a broken text log tied an important final puzzle. Another easy quality-of-life improvement would be to clean up needless evidence clutter of past cases that are no longer relevant; even if new evidence goes to the top, having such a stuffed menu can subtly fool players into thinking all of that extraneous intel may still be useful.

While the puzzle design mostly works, perhaps Horizons' biggest letdown is the mishandled story latched onto it. There's practically an even split between the positive and negative. Its best narrative qualities stem back to what I'll call "concept-driven storytelling" (as a rough shorthand). Stella's first monologue greets you with some rather heady topics to consider. There's something about one's entire life only being a generational tether between two habitable planets – destined to never breathe in the atmosphere of either – that's exciting to empathize with in these characters. That unique vantage point also informs other world-building aspects, such as artificial reproduction, strict hierarchy versus democracy, unique illnesses, and more. Even the small things like the Zephyr's space station/rocket hybrid design makes intuitive sense for this century-long voyage across the stars.

It's a shame, then, how the characters aren't well-incorporated into said world-building. With the exception of Stella – who's merely fine as a protagonist – no other character receives a proper mix of characterization alongside the topic that person is exploring. The most screen time given to a side character is the ship's captain (naturally), but her staid dialogue is typically disguised exposition and the occasional detour about Stella potentially questioning authority. A crucial confrontation between Stella and a revealed adversary leads to her questioning their long-term friendship, while I'm left wondering where that was established in the script. Certain supporting characters can get away with being pre-packaged NPCs solely in service to the puzzle design, but not every character.

This poor balancing between background lore and characterization also affects Horizons' fairly-flexible choice system. Although incredibly hard to pull off, it's possible for someone to get all of Stella's cases wrong and see those ripple effects unfold in the final act. Even getting half of them wrong can lead to unresolved story threads. That's not to say this reactive storytelling is the indie equivalent to Baldur's Gate III, but it's easily a step above Telltale's "Clementine will remember that" alerts; then again, those falling dominoes would carry far greater impact if any character here was as well-written as Lee or Clementine.

For the sake of beating a dead horse, a stronger narrative would've also gone splendidly alongside Digitales' presentational upgrades. The greater pixel density and extra .5 dimension upgrade since Lacuna is akin to the team hopping from NES to SNES. The difference is night and day. Moreso than simply looking prettier, the increased population sizes, texture quality, and swooping camera tricks provide an extra "it" factor to Stella's sense of place aboard the Zephyr. While neither are stellar in their own right, the audio design and Julian Colbus' synth-heavy soundtrack do enough to sustain that immersion; that said, Colbus' OST wears out its welcome thanks to the aforementioned laborious backtracking. Choppy pacing can have greater downstream effects beyond storytelling and game design.

Beyond Horizons can be fascinating, and there's sound logic within its deduction puzzles, but it simply doesn't have the follow-through that it should. You can see Digitales holding all the necessary components in hand, yet some missing pages from the instruction manual result in these gears rarely clicking together in perfect harmony. While the various moral and political topics feel incredibly tangible and potent within this setting, most of the characters extolling them are as dull as dishwater. And though the puzzle designs feel exciting and dynamic, several secondary elements that go into solving them are the complete opposite. There's enough for fans to stick with The Mission while the rest of the crew will abandon ship.

Contractor by trade and writer by hobby, Lee's obnoxious criticisms have found a way to be featured across several gaming sites: N4G, VGChartz, Gaming Nexus, DarkStation, and TechRaptor! He started gaming in the mid-90s and has had the privilege in playing many games across a plethora of platforms. Reader warning: each click given to his articles only helps to inflate his Texas-sized ego. Proceed with caution.